YotaTech Forums - View Single Post

alanh · 09-19-2002, 07:12 PM

Corey,

I have a Boeing surplus Dell Latitude CP with a 233MHz CPU, 64MBytes of RAM and a 3.2GByte hard drive. Mine came with a floppy and CD, network/modem PCMCIA card, serial port and USB plus the AC adapter. I bought a DC adapter I plug into the 12v outlet in the 4Runner.

So far it has been adequate for me.

Warning! the following rambles on for awhile

I got a XENARC 6.4" LCD display during a group buy on MP3CAR that runs VGA resolution and plugs into the monitor output of the laptop. I plug the GPS into the serial port and have a small trackball from CompuUSA plugged into the USB port. (about the size of an egg that you can use with one hand) The XENARC has a touch screen, but I wasn't super impressed with it - its kind of touchy with double-clicks, etc. but without the extra serial port I can't use it anyway. I decided to spend $20 or so on the trackball instead of $50 (cheapest I saw on Ebay) for another serial port and so far I'm satisfied with that. So far I haven't got a real solution to no keyboard conveniently located, but I downloaded a free piece of software that puts up a keyboard on the screen and you can click on the keys to enter text which would probably be minimally acceptable for typing in a simple waypoint name or something.

As for mapping software.....
I have not used any of the big names and have not used anything that does trip planning or autorouting with turn directions, etc.

I've tried a free product called USAPhotoMaps which downloads satelite photos from TerraServer. It will do moving map and works reasonably well and the price is certainly good. It has no actual topo map capability as far as I know. If your GPS reports a location out of bounds for the photo you have loaded, it stops receiving and you have to click on a pop-up box which is a little annoying. As I recall, it doesn't read any of the other GPS info like altitude, speed, time, etc. Some times its neat to be able to see a photo instead of trying to interprete a topo map. Of course, the photos have the same problem as the topos, in most cases they are quite a few years out of date.

I played a little with Fugawi using photos I downloaded from Teraserver (don't actually have any CDs with topo maps). That process was pretty tedious - had to do some conversion and then enter the coordinates of 3 corners of the photo so it could track on the map. It seemed a little slow updating the position driving in town. I suspect more horsepower to deal with a picture file of 50MBytes would have helped there. I didn't try it with topo maps, and it has some other nice features, so don't consider this a non-endorsement at this point. (One thing I liked is 3 different brightness modes - day, dusk, night - which helps dim the screen at night.) You can display alt., compass, speed, time on your Laptop screen so you don't need to even see the GPS receiver.

The last trip, I used ExpertGPS, which cost around $60 off the web. It comes with no maps, but you can download topo maps and the Terraserver photos from their site. They say they have maps for the US and you don't pay any other fees to get as many as you want as long as they don't go out of business. (They have a demo version that lets you download for one state and randomly blocks out areas.) This one seems to work pretty well too. You can switch back and forth between topo and photo mode at different resolutions. It downloads masses of small files instead of a huge one - # of files could be a limiting factor at some point. You can also put up small boxes with alt., speed, time, compass etc. similar to Fugawi. The map/photo download process can be time consuming. As far as I can tell (but I am not an expert) you can't just give some coordinates (like two opposite corners) and have it download the data. Of course, downloading megabytes of data would be a killer without the cable modem.

Hope all this longwinded rambling has been of some use. I've still got more experimenting to do so this isn't the end of the story. I'm looking into an aux battery setup so I can keep this stuff powered when I stop and not worry about leaving something on and running my starting battery down.

Alan

09-19-2002, 07:12 PM	#10 (permalink)
alanh Contributing Member Join Date: May 2002 Location: Seattle, WA Posts: 275	Corey, I have a Boeing surplus Dell Latitude CP with a 233MHz CPU, 64MBytes of RAM and a 3.2GByte hard drive. Mine came with a floppy and CD, network/modem PCMCIA card, serial port and USB plus the AC adapter. I bought a DC adapter I plug into the 12v outlet in the 4Runner. So far it has been adequate for me. Warning! the following rambles on for awhile I got a XENARC 6.4" LCD display during a group buy on MP3CAR that runs VGA resolution and plugs into the monitor output of the laptop. I plug the GPS into the serial port and have a small trackball from CompuUSA plugged into the USB port. (about the size of an egg that you can use with one hand) The XENARC has a touch screen, but I wasn't super impressed with it - its kind of touchy with double-clicks, etc. but without the extra serial port I can't use it anyway. I decided to spend $20 or so on the trackball instead of $50 (cheapest I saw on Ebay) for another serial port and so far I'm satisfied with that. So far I haven't got a real solution to no keyboard conveniently located, but I downloaded a free piece of software that puts up a keyboard on the screen and you can click on the keys to enter text which would probably be minimally acceptable for typing in a simple waypoint name or something. As for mapping software..... I have not used any of the big names and have not used anything that does trip planning or autorouting with turn directions, etc. I've tried a free product called USAPhotoMaps which downloads satelite photos from TerraServer. It will do moving map and works reasonably well and the price is certainly good. It has no actual topo map capability as far as I know. If your GPS reports a location out of bounds for the photo you have loaded, it stops receiving and you have to click on a pop-up box which is a little annoying. As I recall, it doesn't read any of the other GPS info like altitude, speed, time, etc. Some times its neat to be able to see a photo instead of trying to interprete a topo map. Of course, the photos have the same problem as the topos, in most cases they are quite a few years out of date. I played a little with Fugawi using photos I downloaded from Teraserver (don't actually have any CDs with topo maps). That process was pretty tedious - had to do some conversion and then enter the coordinates of 3 corners of the photo so it could track on the map. It seemed a little slow updating the position driving in town. I suspect more horsepower to deal with a picture file of 50MBytes would have helped there. I didn't try it with topo maps, and it has some other nice features, so don't consider this a non-endorsement at this point. (One thing I liked is 3 different brightness modes - day, dusk, night - which helps dim the screen at night.) You can display alt., compass, speed, time on your Laptop screen so you don't need to even see the GPS receiver. The last trip, I used ExpertGPS, which cost around $60 off the web. It comes with no maps, but you can download topo maps and the Terraserver photos from their site. They say they have maps for the US and you don't pay any other fees to get as many as you want as long as they don't go out of business. (They have a demo version that lets you download for one state and randomly blocks out areas.) This one seems to work pretty well too. You can switch back and forth between topo and photo mode at different resolutions. It downloads masses of small files instead of a huge one - # of files could be a limiting factor at some point. You can also put up small boxes with alt., speed, time, compass etc. similar to Fugawi. The map/photo download process can be time consuming. As far as I can tell (but I am not an expert) you can't just give some coordinates (like two opposite corners) and have it download the data. Of course, downloading megabytes of data would be a killer without the cable modem. Hope all this longwinded rambling has been of some use. I've still got more experimenting to do so this isn't the end of the story. I'm looking into an aux battery setup so I can keep this stuff powered when I stop and not worry about leaving something on and running my starting battery down. Alan